Rain? Snow? Not go kiteboarding?

Saturday Oct 14th

Well it has been quite a week in the Southern Ontario region for weather this last week. Because of a large low pressure system near Hudson Bay, the wind has been blowing near gale force since Wednesday. Our friends in Buffalo NY got 20 inches of snow! Temperatures have been below freezing at night and when I was work Wednesday afternoon I saw my first snow flurries!

The forecast for my favourite spot at Sauble Beach, ON was for gusty winds and cool temperatures - below 10 deg C. When I woke up Saturday morning, ikitesurf indicated that the winds were blowing about 25 knots with gusts to 30. The wind was forecasted to decrease over the day. So I set out for Sauble from Pickering. In the almost 3 hour drive, I went through several snow squalls and rain showers on the way up.

When I got to the beach it was an interesting drive out on the beach. Normally you can drive your car on dry sand out about .5 of a km from the road. This time though the road was covered with water! I don’t have a 4X4 so I took it real slow and managed to get out to a dry spot. Most of the beach was covered with water due to the very strong winds pushing the water in on to the beach. The beach is very flat here.

I was the only one on the beach. I took out the wind meter and did some measurements. The wind was blowing WNW from 12 to 25 mph. In addition there were some large lake effect snow squalls coming in off the lake. One squall had gusts up to 42 mph! Not something that you would want to get caught out on the water with your kite. Since the forecast was for the wind to drop a bit, I decided to wait around to see what happened.

While I was waiting, another couple of guys showed up and waited around for a bit and then left thinking they would come back later. I have a Blackberry that I have internet access on so I was reading the kiteforum and checking the wind on ikitesurf. From 1200 - 1430 hrs, 3 big snow squalls came through with wind shifts and very high gusts. One nice thing about this location is that you could see the squalls coming 15 minutes before they hit. During that time I also read the unfortunate news that a kiter had been injured at Cherry Beach in Toronto on Thursday. Added to my sense of being very careful about going out.

At 1430 hrs, no more squalls were evident and the wind had settled down a bit to 17 - 25 mph. So I decided to pump up my 9m kite and get ready to kite. I got everything ready and for those interested I was wearing a 5/3 wetsuit with full booties and 2mm neoprene gloves. Oh and my standard equipment - a helmet. If you are reading this and new into kiteboarding, wear a helmet! You only have one head even if you don’t like the way it looks!

I self launched and got the kite into the sky and walked out. You have to walk about 200 meters out into the water before you have enough water to safety kite. I got going and had a great 2 hour session! Wind was gusty but quite manageable on my 9m Boxer C kite. Like I always do, here are the things I got out of my session.

1. I made sure that I kept a frequent check on what the sky / weather was like behind me. When you are kiting any dodgy weather will come from behind you. I made the decision before I went out, that if I saw a squall heading anywhere close to where I was kiting, I get in and get the kite secured ASAP. Had I been at a beach where the water was deep, I don’t think I would have gone out. I knew that at any point, I would be able to hit my 5th line on the kite and be safe.

2. Hands get cold! It’s inportant to keep them moving. After about an hour I noticed that my hands were cold in my gloves. The fingers were slightly numb. It was similar to what I experience skiing on the winter first thing in the morning. I moved them around and took my front hand off the bar on some tacks. That helped them warm up.

3. When I transition and go the other way, you need to adjust which way your feet are pointed. Booties don’t help with this. I found that on my weak side, I was having problems getting enough weight on my back foot. This was happening because on the transition, I was not moving my heel towards the back of the board. Once I did this, I could put a lot more weight on my back foot.

4. Front leg should never be locked / hyper extended. I realized that I was trying to get my front leg too straight. This was putting strain on my knee. Knee needs to be slightly bent.

5. Don’t try new stuff if you are the only one out. No I didn’t do this but I was very aware I was riding alone and just worked on stuff that I had already tried and knew I could execute. Well I did try one jump. I wanted to see what the 9m kite was like to jump. It was fine - the rider didn’t do so well - around the horn!

Overall it was great to get another session in and like always I learn something from each session.